DIFFERENT TEAM, SAME ORGANIZATION: FC Cincinnati loses to another Red Bull team, the USL side

MONTCLAIR, N.J. – Junior Flemmings scored twice within a two-minute span in the second half with the for 10-man Red Bulls II to turn a close match into a rout en route a 4-0 vcitory over FC Cincinnati at MSU Soccer Park Saturday.

FC Cincinnati (8-9-7, 31 points) suffered a defeat to a Red Bulls-based club for the second time in five days. On Tuesday, the Ohio-based club lost a two-goal lead and eventually the game to the Red Bulls’ Major League Soccer side, 3-2, in the Lamar Hunt/U.S. Open Cup.

The four goals was the NYRBII’s (9-11-4, 31 points) biggest offensive output of the United Soccer League as Cincy The win moved NYRB II level on points for seventh place in the Eastern Conference with wins being the first tie-breaker.

“It’s certainly one of our best performances, a complete performance,” NYRBII head coach John Wolyniec said. “We did a lot on the offensive and defensive end. Limited a very good team to little in the attack so I feel pretty good, I feel like we’re starting to gain some momentum, the last three results have been pretty good against good teams so we feel pretty good about that.”

Wolyniec also was heartened by the recent play of Flemmings and Stefano Bonomo, who scored his third goal in as many games and fourth in the five games he has appeared in this season.

“It’s interesting both those guys had some injuries through the offseason and it’s taken some time for them to get back,” he said. “They’ve continued to work and I’m sure it threw them off early getting back to full fitness but you can see now Bonomo’s becoming the player that we thought he could be. With him it’s almost like the goals are just gravy on top because he does all the work that we ask in holding the ball, challenging, running and pressing and all that stuff.

“With Junior obviously, he’s starting to round out his form and you could see that in the end of the game. It looked a lot like last year where we got up in games, we closed out games with extra goals because Junior could be really effective when the game got loose. He gets a few chances so it’s good to see that from him today.”

FCC came out with some life as Senegalese striker Dijby struck the crossbar in the 10th minute.

NYRB II grabbed all the goals they needed as Noah Powder drew a penalty kick in the 23rd minute. Bonomo stepped up to the spot and slotted it home past a goalkeeper Mitch Hildebrandt, who guessed the wrong way.

“I’m just playing every game in the same way going into it, doing my role, doing what the coach tells me and if a goal comes, a goal comes fortunately in the past four games they’ve come,” Bonomo said. “It’s been a good run so far, got to keep it up.”

Three minutes before halftime, a Zeiko Lewis in-swinger found the head of Hassan Ndam, who tallied his first professional goal.

Ndam was sent off in the 65th minute of the match after being assessed two yellow cards in a span of three minutes, the second one for fighting.

Despite being down a man, NYRB II kept up the pressure in the offensive half of the pitch culminating in the 72nd minute as Flemmings cut inside on his defender and fired a shot past Hildebrandt.

Two minutes later, Flemmings completed his brace finishing off a looping ball over the top from Kazu Shigenobu for a four-goal advantage.

“We’ve realized where we are in the table and we just picking up stuff at the right time getting some good results against three of the better teams in the league,” Flemmings said. “We just realize, ‘Hey, now is the time.’ we realize we better do it now. We can’t wait till the last minute to try and get some points so we came together as a group and decided we wanted to get some points in order for us to be in a playoff spot.”

The match maintained its physicality all the way to the end as FCC saw Josu sent off in the 89th minute for two yellow cards.

New York heads out to Ottawa, Canada next weekend to take on Ottawa Fury FC in a 2 p.m. ET match Sunday, Aug. 27.